“The Gods did not see the First Apocalypse,” Uncle Maithanet was saying, “so why would they see the Second? They are blind to the No-God. They are blind to any intelligence without soul.”

Again the imperceptible pause before Mother’s reply. “But Kellhus is a Prophet … How—?”

“How could he be hunted by the Gods?”

Kelmomas lingered upside-down next to his brother, his heels swaying above.

“Isn’t there anything you can do, Sammi?”

Samarmas shook his head, still doing his gurgle-laugh-gurgle at his brother’s ridiculous pose.

“Lord Sejenus,” Maithanet was saying, “taught us to see the Gods not as entities unto themselves, but as fragments of the God. This is what my brother hears, the Voice-Absolute. This is what has renewed the Covenant of Gods and Men. You know this, Esmi.”

“So you’re saying the Hundred could very well be at war with the God’s designs—with their very own sum?”

“Yes-yes,” Theliopa interjected. “There are one hundred and eighty-nine references referring to the disparate ends of the Gods and the God of Gods, two from the Holy Tractate itself. ‘For they are like Men, hemmed in by darkness, making war on the shadows of they know not what.’ Schol-Scholars, thirtyfour, twenty. ‘For I am the God, the rule of all things …’”

Kelmomas swung his feet down to sit cross-legged before Samarmas, shimmied close enough to touch knees. “I know,” he whispered. “I know something you can do …”

Samarmas flinched and jerked his head, as though hearing something too remarkable to be believed.

“What? What? What?”

“Think of your own soul,” Uncle Maithanet was saying. “Think of the war within, the way the parts continually betray the whole. We are not so different from the world we live in, Esmi …”

“I know—I know all this!”

“How about balance?” Kelmomas said. “You know how to balance, don’t you?”

Moments later, Samarmas was perched tottering on the balcony’s broad stone rail, deep spaces yawing out beyond and beneath him. Kelmomas watched from the playroom, standing just behind the line of sunlight across the floor, grinning as though astonished by his skill and daring. The distance-filtered voices of his uncle and mother seemed to fall from the sky.

“The White-Luck Warrior,” his uncle was saying, “need not be real. The rumours alone constitute a dire threat.”

“Yes, I agree. But how do you battle rumours?”

Kelmomas could almost see his uncle’s simulated frown.

“How else? With more rumours.”

Samarmas whooped in whispering triumph. Cotton-white arms out and waving. Toes flexed across a marmoreal line. The sycamores rearing behind, dark beneath sunlit caps, reaching up as though to catch some higher fall.

“And the Yatwerians?” Mother asked.

“Call a council. Invite the Matriarch herself here to the Andiamine Heights.”

The sudden dip and lean. The stabilizing twitches. The small looks of bodily panic.

“Yes, but you and I both know she isn’t the real leader of the Cult.”